Flamethrower (6 page)

Ruby was fuming. She hated being jerked around. In the past, if a boyfriend had exhibited the slightest trace of jerking behavior, she’d left without a second thought. Women friends were supposed to be above that kind of thing, and one’s psychiatrist
really
didn’t have any business pulling that kind of stunt. But, as Ruby was discovering, her psychiatrist was no ordinary psychiatrist. Nor an ordinary woman. No. Jody Ray didn’t have an ordinary bone in her body. Which didn’t make Ruby any less furious about the jerking.

Ruby had a moment of disorientation when she reached the street. The day was too bright, the kind to make people feel guilty for even a slightly dark thought. And Ruby was having thousands of dark thoughts.

Heading for the subway, Ruby passed Jody’s cream-colored Mercedes. She had an urge to kick it.

Ruby caught the 6 train to the L, riding it nearly the entire
length of Brooklyn before switching at Broadway Junction for the A train. On the A there was a gaggle of kids, not more than thirteen years old but loud and completely foul-mouthed.
Motherfucker
this,
suck my dick
that,
I’m gonna fuck you up the ass
, etc. Ruby and the few other passengers on the car stared down at their laps. Ruby had been a wild kid. She’d run with a pack who vandalized phone booths and jumped the train-yard fences to graffiti the trains. She’d even had her own tag: Fatal Pop. She’d been wild, irreverent, but never rude to individuals. Even at the height of teen angst she’d hated rudeness.

At Grant Avenue, Ruby emerged from the subway, crossed North Conduit, and walked over to Linden Boulevard. The day was even brighter here where the buildings were low and the trees never grew enough to afford much shade. Ruby passed the incongruous flower shop that occupied space near a muffler shop and a gas station. The flower shop owner, a fiftyish white woman with a very tan hide, nodded at Ruby. For no reason other than Ruby was another white person. Tribal allegiances, Ruby reflected, were a weird thing.

Ruby walked, dizzy from the loud traffic, looking forward to the solace of The Hole, where all the city’s noise came to die.

Coleman was standing in front of the barn with his bay gelding Captain, surrounded by half a dozen kids. Ruby had completely forgotten it was a kid day. The men and women who kept horses at The Hole volunteered teaching horsemanship to neighborhood kids. Lately, Coleman had started asking Ruby to help him out, and the whole thing made her nervous. Unlike some of her girlfriends, Ruby didn’t have any
pressing need to have kids. She figured one day a stray kid would find his or her way into her life and that would be fine. But she wasn’t the type who went out of her way to spend time with kids. These kids were all right though. Degenerate little savages whose lives had already been filled with so much hell that nothing scared them. They were mischievous, mouthy and fearless. Ruby liked that.

“Hi,” Ruby greeted Coleman.

“Finally,” Coleman said. “You were supposed to be here at noon.”

“I was?” Ruby squinted.

Coleman squinted back. “What, you forgot? What the hell is wrong with you?”

The kids started giggling. There were six of them. Five boys and one girl. Ruby recognized one of them, Joey, a gangly dark-skinned kid who lived ten blocks away.

“I got a lot on my mind, Coleman,” Ruby said.

The cowboy shrugged and handed her Captain’s reins.

“Get this girl up on the horse and lead her around some.” Coleman indicated a girl of about ten. She had close-set black eyes and cheekbones that could have sliced a salami. She was giving Ruby the evil eye.

“I’m Ruby,” Ruby said.

“Alicia,” the girl said.

“You been on a horse before?”

“Yeah,” Alicia said, sticking her bottom lip out.

“So, you wanna get on or what?” Ruby asked.

“Yeah,” Alicia said, jutting her bottom lip out further.

The little girl walked to the left side of the horse then stared up at the stirrup forlornly.

Ruby hoisted her into the saddle. Captain shook his head once, a homage to some distant past when he actually had the energy to make a fuss over a rider getting on his back.

As Ruby led the gelding forward, she could feel Alicia’s eyes boring holes in the back of her head. They walked in silence, just the soft sound of Captain’s hooves against dirt. Ruby didn’t really know what to say to the girl. She hated the way most people talked down to kids, as if they were morons. Alicia had probably seen more inexplicably painful stuff in her ten years than Ruby had in thirty-four.

“You got that big black horse?” the girl suddenly asked Ruby’s back.

“What?” Ruby turned to look at Alicia.

“That big black horse in the barn. That’s yours?”

“Yup,” Ruby said. “That’s Jack Valentine.”

“How come you got a horse?”

“Someone gave him to me. He used to be a racehorse, but he hurt himself and can’t race anymore.”

“How come he hurt himself?”

“Running fast,” Ruby said.

“Oh. You don’t want him to run fast when you ride him?”

“Not that fast,” Ruby smiled.

“I wanna ride your horse,” Alicia said then. “This one’s too slow.”

“Captain’s just taking care of you. He knows what’s what.”

“He can go fast?” Alicia was frowning at Ruby.

“Sure can,” Ruby said, “but you’re not ready for that yet.”

“Yes I am!” Alicia protested.

“Oh yeah?

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Ruby said.

She led Captain over to the paddock behind Coleman’s barn.

Alicia’s face clouded. “I can’t go fast in here!”

“Trust me,” Ruby said. Ruby let go of Captain, and the gelding dutifully walked ahead. Alicia looked happier.

“How do I get him to go?” she asked.

“Sit up straight and just think about trotting,” Ruby said.

“Just think about it?”

“Yup.”

“I’m thinking about it,” the girl said.

“Now very gently squeeze his sides with your legs,” Ruby said. “Gently.”

The girl’s legs didn’t even reach halfway down the horse’s sides, but Captain knew what Alicia wanted and obliged with a short choppy trot. The girl bounced all over the place and let out a little squeal. Captain took that as his cue to stop trotting.

“That’s it?” the girl said.

“He knew you were nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Okay, so do it again. Try to relax. Make your body part of his.”

This time Captain trotted around the entire periphery of the paddock before pulling himself up and looking at Ruby with that
Can I go home now?
expression.

Ruby patted the old gelding. Captain let out a sigh but Alicia wanted more. Ruby spent another half hour teaching the girl how to ask the horse to stop, start, back up, and walk in figure eights. Captain, gentleman horse that he was, took care of the little girl. Ruby was starting to wonder if Alicia would ever get tired when finally the girl announced she was thirsty.

Ruby walked over, took hold of Captain’s bridle, and helped the girl down.

Alicia raced ahead into the barn, and Ruby expected that would be the last she’d see of her. But as she led Captain into the barn, she saw Alicia standing there, clutching a can of Coke and beaming.

“Now what?” the girl asked.

The other kids were all long gone by the time Ruby had shown Alicia how to groom the horse, clean the tack, and pick the droppings out of Captain’s straw. Ruby suspected the girl would have stayed there and slept in Captain’s stall if they’d let her, but it was close to 6 P.M. and Coleman announced it was time for him to give Alicia a ride home.

“I can come back tomorrow?” Alicia asked, her mouth forming a hopeful
O
.

Ruby realized she’d just helped create another victim of Horse Fever.

NIGHT WAS FALLING
by the time Ruby finished her chores and went into Jack Valentine’s stall to canoodle with her horse for a few minutes. She’d already turned the lights off and could barely see her inky gelding in the shadows. The dim
light was soothing. She fed Jack a mint and watched him roll it over his tongue. He even closed his eyes, giving it the ultimate taste test before finally biting down into it.

A slice of yellow moon was rising as Ruby closed up the barn and started walking down the dirt road, heading toward the subway. Triple Harrison was out on his sagging front stoop, smoking a cigarette and staring into space.

“Hey, Triple,” Ruby said.

“Where you going?”

“Home.”

“Need a ride?”

“Sure, I’d love a ride to the train.”

“I’ll do one better and give you a ride home. I wouldn’t mind some Nathan’s fries.”

“Really?”

“Really. Let me get my keys.”

Triple got up and disappeared inside his house for a few seconds, emerging with a mysteriously overstuffed backpack.

“You gonna camp out at Nathan’s?”

“Nah, just needed a few things,” he said cryptically.

Ruby didn’t press it.

Triple’s Chevy Caprice Classic had once been blue but was now dirt-colored. Inside there were empty soda cans, candy wrappers, and, on the floor of the passenger side, a pair of women’s panties.

“Triple, you’ve got panties on your floor.”

“She meant nothing to me,” he said, smiling. “You’re the only one.”

“Be that as it may, would you mind putting those somewhere else?” Ruby wrinkled up her nose.

Triple reached down, plucked the panties from the floor, and stuffed them in his front pocket.

“Greta,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition.

“Greta?”

“Owner of the panties. Lives in Brighton, hence the backpack. I might stop in and see her. She’s an animal psychic.” He nosed the car forward, up the little hill and out onto Linden Boulevard.

“Ah,” Ruby said.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Okay,” Ruby said.

“Greta told me my mare would like it if I got her a new goat.”

Peanuts, the goat that had lived with Triple’s mare, had died of old age a few weeks earlier.

“I could have told you that.
You
could have told you that.”

“You’re such a pessimist,” Triple said.

“How does that make me a pessimist?”

“You just don’t believe in magic.”

“Sure I do. I’m just leery of incompetent animal psychics.”

“You’re calling my girlfriend incompetent?”

Now Triple looked genuinely pissed off, and Ruby realized she’d gone too far.

“No, Triple, I’m not. It didn’t come out right.”

“Uh huh,” Triple said.

She tried backpedaling. Asked for more details on Greta
the Animal Psychic, but Triple was hurt now and would answer only in grunts.

“I’m sorry. I’ve had a bad few days, Triple.”

“Whatever,” Triple said.

Ruby tried to exude niceness for the rest of the ride. She told cute anecdotes about Alicia and Captain, but it didn’t help.

Triple looked gloomy as he nudged the Chevy to the curb near Ruby’s building.

“Thanks, Triple. I appreciate the ride, and I’m sorry to be such a downer.” Ruby scooted closer to him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said.

Triple finally looked at her. “I won’t,” he said, giving a tiny smile.

R
uby opened the door to her apartment, and Stinky tried to trip her. As she bent down to pet the cat, she smelled something good coming from the kitchen.

“Where were you?” Ed was standing in the kitchen door, holding a giant spoon covered in tomato sauce.

“You’re home? And you’re cooking?”

“Evidently,” Ed said, leaning down to kiss her.

“I was at the barn,” she said when the kiss was over.

“Oh. Right,” he said, looking down at Ruby’s muddy barn boots. “I’m making pasta,” he added.

“Nice,” Ruby said. She watched Ed stir the pasta sauce. She had told him thousands of times that pasta after 5 P.M. did strange things to her body and made her feel stupid the next day. Ed had either forgotten or didn’t believe her since he thrived on late-night pasta in spite of not having any Italian ancestry. Ed was of German and Irish descent. There shouldn’t have been any predisposition for nighttime pasta. Unless you factored in the German people’s love of Italy. There was a long history of college-age Germans going to Italy to find themselves. Or so Ruby’s German ex-boyfriend had once told her.

As Ed tasted the sauce, Ruby tangentially thought about
the German ex-boyfriend, Axel. He had married a Chinese computer programmer moments after he and Ruby had broken up. The Chinese computer programmer had not been fond of Axel’s exes, so Ruby hadn’t heard from Axel in six years. She missed him slightly, the way she slightly missed most ex-lovers. Attila was the only one she missed violently. The only one who haunted her. Of course, he was the only one who’d been murdered. Ruby had no idea what she’d feel for him if he were still living.

Ruby ate a good portion of pasta and felt it like lead in her belly. She mentally cursed her boyfriend but outwardly smiled. He’d made her dinner.

Ruby did the dishes then went into the living room, where she found Ed on the couch, eyes closed, a
Law & Order
rerun on the TV. As Ruby sat on the edge of the couch, Ed opened his eyes. They were bloodshot with exhaustion.